Capitol Comments

Race to the Top Finalists Announced

Fifteen states and Washington, D.C., are leading the pack in the Race to the Top.

Those 16 are finalists for phase 1 of the special education funding included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It’s part of a $4.35 billion effort by the U.S. Department of Education to reshape America’s educational system to better prepare students.

The finalists are Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington, D.C.

Does U.S. Face Global Competitiveness Crisis?

By Tim Weldon

The U.S. will soon be passed by numerous other countries in global competitiveness according to some educational and economic indices.

That may not necessarily be a bad thing, says the leader of one educational policy think tank.
“Is our goal to dominate the world?” asked Watson Scott Swail, executive director for Educational Policy Institute. “What we really want to do is get better than we were. I honestly don’t care if we’re first or fifth or 10th. I just want us to keep getting better.”

“We’ve entered what I call the higher education arms race,” Swail said during an education policy workshop Thursday. Specifically, he argued that the U.S. has an excessive number of colleges—4,000 two- and four-year postsecondary institutions. “I don’t think we need more. I think we need better,” he said.

States Could Lose out on Stimulus Funds

States that use stimulus funds to plug budget holes could face lose out on millions of dollars, the Obama administration said last week.

That warning came in a letter to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell after a plan by the Republican-led Senate came to light. The Senate planned to use stimulus money to plug budget holes -- it would reduce the share of the state budget for education while leaving the state's rainy-day surplus untouched, according to an Associated Press article.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan told Rendell the plan could hurt Pennsylvania's chance to compete for a $5 billion competitive grant fund to reward states and school districts that adopt innovations.

While Duncan's letter specifically addressed the situation in Pennsylvania, it also has implications for other states.

Pennsylvania Helps Keep Students in School

By Michael Jackson, CSG/Eastern Regional Conference

In addition to developing the work force, students who stay in school are more likely to graduate and find jobs, but finding real ways to keep at-risk students in classrooms is tough.

One Northeastern state is trying to change that.

Pennsylvania has increasingly shifted toward using evidenced-based prevention programs in schools, betting that those programs will help reduce violence in the classroom and keep students out of jail.

It’s a bet that seems to be paying off. According to the Penn State Prevention Research Center, the state reported a $317 million return on its $60 million investment in these educational programs over the last 10 years.

Four-Day School Weeks Save Money, Have Academic Perks Too

By Jennifer Ginn

The economy is officially in a recession and all the easy cuts to education have been made, legislators learned at the Education Policy Task Force session during The Council of State Governments annual meeting Dec. 5. Now it’s time for the more creative approaches. Some states are turning to a four-day school week to save money, and they’re finding out there are academic advantages to the approach as well.

Noelle Ellerson, a policy analyst with the American Association of School Administrators, said a recent survey showed that superintendents have already turned down the thermostats, eliminated nonessential travel, reduced hiring and cut back buying supplies like paper. Those were the easy steps.
“The first steps taken by school superintendents and their boards were nonacademic,” she said. “… But when money gets tight, there’s nowhere else to cut.”

‘Urgent Care Needed’ in Higher Education

By Mary Branham Dusenberry

Every state but California gets an F for higher education affordability in a new “Measuring Up” report released this week by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

And California’s grade—a C—comes primarily because the state has a robust community college system that’s basically free, Patrick Kelly, a senior associate for the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, told attendees of an education policy workshop at The Council of State Governments' annual meeting in Omaha Dec. 4.

“There were major declines across the board in affordability,” Kelly said. And any gains in affordability are not keeping up. In fact, Kelly said, tuition and fees are increasing at rates higher than any other economic measure.

State Laws Allow Four-Day School Weeks

By Tim Weldon

 

In Webster County, Ky., the hallways are quiet on Mondays. There are no banging lockers and no students crowding the hallways on their way to class. Like Webster County, some local school districts across the country are taking advantage of flexible state laws that allow them to adopt innovative approaches for greater efficiency. The hallmark approach is the four-day school week and some states are changing state laws to allow it.

 

Although abbreviated school weeks in the U.S. date back at least to the early 1970s, more school districts have expressed an interest in adopting alternative calendars in recent months. Those districts are primarily in isolated, rural counties, where the cost of transporting students is disproportionately high.

 

Ensuring Affordability of Higher Education

By Mary Branham Dusenberry

The cost of higher education across the country is skyrocketing. Tuition is increasing at a much faster pace than family income, and states are working to ensure higher education doesn’t become out of reach for the neediest students.

While states are strapped for funding in these tough economic times, some experts in higher education financing say there are ways to ensure tuition increases don’t get out of control.

Former Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton, who was recently appointed to the state’s Council on Postsecondary Education, said states should ensure universities are operating at high levels of efficiency. “If your institutions are running reasonably efficiently, if you cut funding, you’re going to cut quality or quantity,” he said.

Oklahoma Universal Preschool Program Produces Results

A new study found big gains in cognitive skills for students enrolled in Oklahoma's universal preschool.

The gains by 4-year-olds enrolled in the school-based prekindergarten program were as much as nine months in pre-reading skills, seven months in pre-writing skills and five months in pre-math skills, relative to their peers, researchers at Georgetown University found. That compares to the federal Head Start program, in which students had gains of six months in pre-reading skills, three months in pre-writing skills, and five months in pre-math schools, relative to their peers.

“The children in Tulsa’s pre-K and Head Start programs experienced substantial gains in pre-reading, pre-writing and pre-math skills above and beyond those that otherwise occur through aging,” said William T. Gormley Jr., lead author of the study, university professor and co-director of the Center for Research on Children in the U.S. at Georgetown University. “We found that negative effects of family and environmental risk factors can be lessened by a strong preschool program.”

Researchers also found that pre-K participation and Head Start participation were more powerful predictors of certain test outcomes than gender, free lunch eligibility, a mother’s education or whether the biological father lives at home.

Researchers believe the findings could influence policy and funding decisions across the country as many states consider expanding or restructuring their preschool programs.

Read about some of those changes in this article from State News and in a 2007 Trends Alert from The Council of State Governments.

States Need to Improve Access to Higher Education

Access to higher education matters now in a way that it hasn’t mattered in the last 30 or 40 years.

That’s according to Pat Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. He said while Americans have always been interested in access and quality of college education, the movement of baby boomers is really hitting home.

“We’re sort of the pig in the python,” Callan said during the Education Policy Task Force meeting Thursday.

Baby boomers have been not only the largest generation, but also the best educated. But now that generation is moving into retirement and out of the work force in the next 20 to 25 years.